Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg On 'Napalm Girl' Photo: 'We Don't Always Get it Right' (theguardian.com)

Facebook will learn from a mistake it made by deleting a historic Vietnam war photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, said Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer. The photograph was removed from several accounts on Friday, including that of the Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg, on the grounds that it violated Facebook's restrictions on nudity. It was reinstated after Solberg accused Facebook of censorship and of editing history, The Guardian reports. From the article:"These are difficult decisions and we don't always get it right," Sandberg wrote in a letter to the prime minister, obtained by Reuters on Monday under Norway's freedom of information rules. "Even with clear standards, screening millions of posts on a case-by-case basis every week is challenging," Sandberg wrote. "Nonetheless, we intend to do better. We are committed to listening to our community and evolving. Thank you for helping us get this right," she wrote. She said the letter was a sign of "how seriously we take this matter and how we are handling it."

Comments

Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[wierd_w]

Seriously-- You got caught red handed being censorship loving fuckwits who refuse to accept community feedback on policy decisions, naturally, you got your asses handed to you over it, and now you want to cuddle back into good graces so you can once again start dishing out your authoritarian horseshit once this blows over.

Fuck you.

(and for the people with the usual "Their service, their rules!" attitudes, fuck you idiots too. Facebook has maneuvered itself as a major gatekeeper between the press and their readers. That is what caused this whole censorship issue to explode like this in the first place. Once you start acting like a monopoly, or at least the major stake holder for a necessary position for society, you stop being allowed to have authoritarian control, and need to be more civically minded.)

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[The-Ixian]

Don't use FB... problems solved.

FB is far from a monopoly and they are not a charity. They are a for-profit company and they can run their company any way that they see fit. If you don't like it, vote with your feet and uninstall the app, delete your account and walk away. If enough people do this, then FB will not have the power it has now. FB is only as powerful as your make it.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[110010001000]

I think you are forgetting something: Facebook didn't do this on purpose. They don't hand-screen posts. It is an algorithm. It detected a naked child so it got flagged. No one should be using Facebook anyway.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[OzPeter]

Don't use FB... problems solved.

FB is far from a monopoly and they are not a charity.

FB has just shy on 24% of the entire Earth's human population connected to it. Do you want revisit your idea that that they are not a gatekeeper in social media?

For comparison, twitter only has accounts for about 4.3% of the Earths population.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[The-Ixian]

True, but in this case, it was manually removed by a FB drone after being flagged by another user as inappropriate.

Which is fine. The drone, just like the algorithm, is just doing their pre-programmed job.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[oh_my_080980980]

Think again Potsy: "News organizations are uncomfortably reliant on Facebook to reach an online audience. According to a 2016 study by Pew Research Center, 44% of US adults get their news on Facebook. " https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[oh_my_080980980]

Another pointless post. RTFA:

"In his open letter, Hansen points out that the types of decision Facebook makes about what kind of content is promoted, tolerated, or banned – whether it makes those decisions algorithmically or not – are functionally editorial.

“The media have a responsibility to consider publication in every single case,” he wrote. “This right and duty, which all editors in the world have, should not be undermined by algorithms encoded in your office in California.”"

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[tnk1]

That said... am I really going to lack for knowledge of certain historical photos or current events even if FB does censor them? I knew of that particular picture for decades before FB came out. The reason is that it was plastered all over the place in journalism, in art and even was in one or two music videos that I can recall. Not to mention, you know, history books.

I agree that they tend to box you into your own little echo chamber if you let them, but I am frequently annoyed and even somewhat offended by what people sometimes post on my FB. The reason for that is that I don't unfriend people who simply differ from my opinions on FB. Even if it is eye roll inducing at times.

Ultimately, FB lets you form your own little soundproof room safe from other viewpoints and censored from objectionable material, but it isn't keeping me from seeing any of those things because I have chosen to not become offended by other people's opinions. I know that not every one does that, but in the end, that's less about FB and more about them.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[swb]

These days when I go down to the public square to stand on my soap box and make my voice heard, the public square is empty.

The public, which used to mostly be reachable via the public sphere, has all moved into spaces which are privately owned and publicly accessible for commerce, but not publicly accessible for free speech.

This is the problem with the "go somewhere else" argument. There is nowhere else.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[jratcliffe]

Except that it also has to be feasible. We're talking about tens, if not hundreds, of millions of pictures a day. Any screening process (and there has to be a screening process) is going to occasionally have a false positive.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

(and for the people with the usual "Their service, their rules!" attitudes, fuck you idiots too. Facebook has maneuvered itself as a major gatekeeper between the press and their readers. That is what caused this whole censorship issue to explode like this in the first place.

There's a bigger problem. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Reddit, Microsoft, Wikipedia, Imgur, Github, all of the big names have formed a consortium where they all have the same content rules and are censoring the same things with an obvious political agenda. Most of the popular internet is owned centrally by one entity that intends to deny you access to information they don't want you to see. The censorship of Gamergate exposed the network two years ago and it has gotten more powerful since then.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[110010001000]

I don't care what "Hansen" says. Facebook isn't going to hand edit anything. They have no responsibility at all. They are just a crap company spewing bshit.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[110010001000]

44% isn't a monopoly. I don't know what your point is. Don't use Facebook. Problem solved. I don't.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Kjella]

I think it's a lot simpler than that they are "censorship loving fuckwits", they're a private company trying to make money. You don't make money if you need an f...ing lawyer to check for rules and exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions and any applicable precedents as to whether or not a particular post is permitted. It used to be as simple as no nudity, not because there's anything wrong with tits and ass but that's not what it's about. Then they started having issues because people posted about breastfeeding and breast cancer and non-sexual reasons (well technically nudity shouldn't be sexual either but that's an even blurrier line) and so they had to start making exceptions.

And now for the record, you can find a naked 9yo on Facebook. What are now the conditions for how "iconic" a photo you must take before another exception will be made? Does it have to become iconic outside of Facebook even though in your opinion it is equally newsworthy? And it's not just their moderators who has to understand the complexity, you also want the users to understand the rules too and then they'd better be simple. Every time you bend the rules you're making it more and more complicated. It's how the real world is, but Facebook doesn't want to deal with every unique set of circumstances.

It's like the US constitution, you start with "freedom of speech" but then it turns out threats, slander, libel, fraud, perjury, shouting fire in a crowded theater or just playing music loudly at 3AM in the morning actually has to curb the edges with exceptions. And then you end up with a ton of legalese and not a one-page flyer with your bill of rights. It's really as simple as that Facebook doesn't need a rule that says no child nudity except if it's an iconic war photo of a naked girl running from a napalm attack. Because this is going to be one of a thousand exceptions at least some will argue they should do.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

%s/"obvious political agenda"/"make more money"/g

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[jofas]

This.

The issues of free speech and the right to assemble are predicated on the openness of public space in which to practice these ideologies. If all public space becomes privately owned, these rights effectively disappear.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Ol Olsoc]

Don't use FB... problems solved.

Because everything is just that simple. Never give feedback, never take feedback, and if you don't like the color of their webpages, go away.

The problem with your simplistic view of life is that people often actually like feedback.

And when we get to altering historic photographs, it gets a little into the area of politics.

Part of the horror of that photograph is that a little kid gets napalmed, her clothes burnt off, and someone is worried that some folks want to fuck her. That's sick on so many levels that someone thinking that is a good reason to censor the "naughty bits" comes off as projection. multi-creepy.

So feedback is not only appropriate but the right thing to do.

Even if its "Fuck you Facebook, I'm unsubscribing because you are a bunch of projecting censoring hacks that want to alter history".

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[guises]

I'm not sure that blaming Facebook is the right call for this particular censorship. The picture was removed for containing underage nudity, which is accurate. The fact that society and the law has become so very intolerant of anything even remotely related to sex and children is the root of this, and napalm girl isn't the first time it has come up.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[wierd_w]

There is a problem with your argument:

The censorship did not stop at just the image. A public open letter to Facebook about this issue by a freaking prime minister was deleted.

Censorship. The real deal.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[grumpy_old_grandpa]

Yeah, about that active user number.
https://www.google.com/trends/...
Granted, some of that downwards trend might be due to people using the native app instead. However, so far, there are no examples of social networks with a double peak. They go up, and they come down. Facebook is bigger, but not a special snowflake in that regard. It will fade.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[wierd_w]

A situation that Facebook, in its majority stakeholder position, does precisely nothing to correct, and instead gives complicit support for.

I definitely will blame them for that.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[aevan]

Not just that. Some games and products use Facebook as their contact/login system. If you want to report a bug, get support, even post on their forums? You best have a facebook account, even if faked details and never used but for this purpose. Granted that's a statement more on the companies involved than any malfeasance on Facebook's part, but still a point towards having to use it.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[UnknownSoldier]

> Don't use FB... problems solved.

Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away.

If FecesBook does dumb shit like censorship then according to your "solution" they would never get feedback on their stupid policy since apparently everyone would stop using it. Let's pretend that you're right and that everyone left FB. All you've done is moved the goal post. With the _next_ social platform everyone eventually would have the _exact_ same problem.

The line must be drawn somewhere, eventually.
Or as the colloquial Picard would say: "The line must be drawn, here!"

"If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for everything."

--
FecesBook, noun: where other people's bullshit is posted as "news"

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[SadButResolved]

You use facebook? I thought that fad fell as fast as the pokemon Go crap.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[spacepimp]

This sounds like along winded way to say that no company of any size could have culpability because they're all just doing their job trying to make money. The people affected by such actions are too simple to understand the nuance of why things occur.

There is a fine line between making money and being a corporate sociopath.

(And now for the record, you can find a naked 9yo on Facebook.) Correction you can find an iconic portrait of a 9 YEAR old who had just been napalmed and spent the next 17 months in a hospital getting skin grafts. The photographer Ut took her and the other children to a hospital in Saigon where she luckily survived.

Facebook makes money and has an obligation to their shareholders. Operating at the scale and visibility they do, makes censorship an incredibly powerful tool. If they hadn't just been in the news for more censorship, and then just yesterday for working with Israel to work on what to censor, and now this. You can white wash it all away as shit happens. I think you'll find the news will always be slanted in their interests and not yours. Mistakes happen, censorship is seldom an accident. Algorithm or not someone censoring what you see is never in your interest.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Calydor]

You say you knew about the picture for decades before Facebook existed. That's great. That's how we learned about things BACK THEN.

The world has changed. You may not like it, I certainly don't like it, but when a sizable portion of the population only really visits Facebook and relies on Facebook for news, events, all that sort of stuff, ANY kind of censorship is getting dangerously close to revisionism.

There is not much difference between the main source of information, be it BREAKING NEWS! or cat videos, saying "There was no naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack" or saying "There was no protesting student run over by a tank on Tiananmen Square".

Be very careful what you allow.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Cederic]

Wait.. Twitter makes money?

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[wierd_w]

In which case, the appropriate action for Facebook to take is to have a human review the image once the poster disputes the takedown, and to act sensibly, rationally, and in a Kong authoritarian manner.

You know, NOT telling the journalist that the image is infringing without any room to contest. NOT taking down not only the journalist's open letter about the improper takedown, and NOT deleting the PRIME MINISTER'S post about it, while pretending that doing those things is all hunky dory.

You know, NOT the way Facebook chose to handle this, and now is trying hard to soon its way out of being caught red handed doing, and publicly shamed for.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[jaa101]

Once you start acting like a monopoly, or at least the major stake holder for a necessary position for society, you stop being allowed to have authoritarian control, and need to be more civically minded.

"Need to" and "legally required to" are two different things, or is there some law you're aware of enforcing this principle? Any jurisdiction will do.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never used Faceberg, and I never will!

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like that official letter from the Nigerian prince. I am sure Facebook is waiting for all these important people to post official documents on their Facebook page. You are either ten or tarded'.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Its a picture of a naked girl running down the street. The context is applied by you, the meaning is interpreted by you, the algorithm is executed by the software.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[wierd_w]

Does law of the jungle count?

When you make your customers leave, you don't get money, and you die.

Facebook is aware of this, but does not wish to change its behavior. That is why it is smearing pablum all over this issue, and trying to kiss and make up, cheater style. (Cause they really love you. Honest.)

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

His point is that it isn't possible to avoid using Facebook and that, at some point, Facebook has a social responsibility to consider. Choosing not to (intentionally) have an account does not invalidate his argument. Unless the wording choice is more important than the sentiment. I'll assume you understand what he is trying to say. If you completely ignore his actual point and simply attack his word choices, that is a form or Ad Hominum and leads me to believe you just like to be a 'words lawyer'.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[wierd_w]

Yes ac, exactly like that, because this:

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Totally never happened, and any post that might have been deleted was certainly not really from the prime minister of Norway.

Obviously.

(Idiot.)

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[wierd_w]

Parsing the text accompanying the image is easy for an algorithm. Much harder than identifying a naked female minor.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody expects a socialist to understand the difference between private ownership and government ownership.
But just for the record zuckerburg is a fucking scumbag anyway, so who cares?

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[wierd_w]

And clearly necons only understand the concepts of Easements and right of way when they directly translate into personal profit, and not when used for the originally prescribed purposes of furthering the public good.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[phantomfive]

If the public is filled with idiots, they will get the government they deserve.

Exhibit A: I give you Trump vs Clinton. Don't look at the speech issuing forth from the fans of either side and tell me they deserve something different.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[pjbgravely]

Do what I did ( if you still can) Block everyone from posting to your wall, timeline or what ever they call it this week. If someone wants to chat with you they will have to message you. If you want to talk to send them your email, and then talk with out having to worry about your conversation ending up in a Facebook ad. Use the connections of Facebook provides without really using it.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[pjbgravely]

If this isn't a double peak I don't know what is. You are right. The trend is down and probably will never go back up.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Kjella]

There is a problem with your argument: The censorship did not stop at just the image. A public open letter to Facebook about this issue by a freaking prime minister was deleted.

No, it stopped at the image as the public open letter attached the same uncensored image saying Facebook is wrong to censor this photo. Facebook removed that post, she reposted it with a censored image. I have Norwegian sources to back that up if that got lost in translation. It's part of the problem of complaining about Facebook on Facebook, showing what's being removed as a violation of the guidelines is in itself a violation of the guidelines.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[AthanasiusKircher]

This is the problem with the "go somewhere else" argument. There is nowhere else.

This is the disturbing natural of reality -- or perhaps SURreality? -- these days.

I remember suffering through reading Jean Baudrillard's musings about "simulacra" decades ago, when he famously published a set of essays including "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place". Of course, Baudrillard understood that the war DID take place, but he argued that the media portrayals and 24-hour news cycle that emerged had created an almost separate reality.

Long before "The Matrix," Baudrillard talked about constructed reality and its ability to deceive and to woo humanity into complacency. But of course he is a horrendous writer and has rightly been ridiculed for willfully obscure nonsense, and at the time I dismissed what little sense I found as po-mo BS.

Alas, now it feels it has all come to pass, and I think of good ole Baudrillard with each year's new trends into the depths of the simulacrum. Encyclopedias and reference works have ceded their authority to wikiality and truthiness, a la Stephen Colbert. Investigative journalism has been replaced by Facebook and Twitter posts. Most people live within the simulacrum, rarely bothering to try to dig deeper and see whether all of this mediated experience actually corresponds to the real world.

And now we've delegated the authority once possessed by CNN and such to the mob of folks on Facebook. In some cases, this has undoubtedly been a good thing -- bringing a fresh democratic voice to things the "old" media would have never bothered with. But it's also a huge problem, since basic quality vetting, fact-checking, etc. are rarely done by the mob before they retweet, like, and repost.

But that's the "reality" we live in now. Rather depressing. It would not surprise me one bit if this led to a new "dark age" as facts become less important than "likes."

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[HiThere]

OK, then make them criminally liable for criminal posts. They shouldn't be able to have it both ways. Either they don't censor, or they are liable for posted content. Since they are clearly censoring, they should be liable. Since the aren't being properly prosecuted, harsh public criticism is a lot less than they deserve.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, there's a human making the actual judgement, but whose job do you think it is look at pictures of naked kids all day? Do you think it's some guy with a college education sitting in a cubicle at Facebook HQ in California?

No, it's some poor individual in a basement somewhere in the Philippines who spends all day filtering out the worst things humanity has to offer, constantly making judgement calls as to whether something is art or obscene. Do you think these people all have enough education to know that this is an iconic image from a historical event? Do you think they check to see if the poster is the prime minister of some country they've probably never heard of? No, they see a photo of a naked girl who appears to be in distress and clicks the "BAD" button. A more educated person or somebody with a different opinion might see it as art or history or simply harmless and clicks the "GOOD" button.

dom

Re: Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a victimof the idiots around me.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[HiThere]

That's not quite true. What *is* true is that there are certain things that they have all decided to "de-emphasize". Whether they decided independently or in collusion is something we don't know, but the effect is about the same. OTOH, there are areas where they disagree, also. And the truth of the material seems to be of only minor concern.

If you think "Gamergate" was a major incident in this area, you need to open your eyes. Most of it is more power or money oriented. (And there are reasons why many of the groups could have come to the same decisions independently, but that this happened is no more provable than that it didn't.)

Re: Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[phantomfive]

If idiots are making you a victim, maybe you need to look at increasing your competency level.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[HiThere]

The argument is about whether they should be criticized, not about whether their actions were legal. If you want to talk about legal, then you need to consider "under the laws of which country". And would it be proper for a country to ban Facebook for doing this in favor of a local company which refrained? If not, why not?

You don't get into such things if you are just considering whether they should be criticized, and I feel that they should be severely and repeatedly criticized. I'd be willing to consider arguments that their actions were illegal, or possibly made them criminally liable for any illegal material posted on their site. (I know there aren't "common carriers" in the meaning of the legislation, but if they didn't exercise editorial control then there would be an argument for considering their position to be analogous. IANAL, so I don't know whether that kind of argument would hold any water, and in which countries...)

Re: Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I still only get one vote, no matter how competent I may be.

And I don't live in Ankh-Morpork.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd think there would be a mechanism that treats multiple accounts posting the same banned image as potential sock puppet accounts. This would then trigger human review to see whether or not an exception is warranted. Otherwise you'd have every spam poster disputing take downs and overwhelming the humans.

Pay me my patent monies Facebook!

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about running your LAMP server?

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

I came here to make pretty much this exact post, with an added eat shit in addition to the fuck you. You beat me to it.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[AmiMoJo]

Before the internet it was TV and radio, which are heavily controlled and content restricted in most places. Before that it was newspapers, content decided by the editor/owner. Before that you had to compete with the other people on their soap boxes in the square, and if there were too many the police would tell you to come back tomorrow.

No one owes you a platform.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[dryeo]

The 1st amendment is very simple. It does not say that you should have endless free speech, it just said that Congress can't pass any laws limiting speech. Nothing about a town passing a noise by-law (something that seems fine as long as it treats everyone the same). Nothing about the courts not being able to limit speech, at a time when many things were illegal even without statutes being passed. Serious threats, slander, libel, fraud, perjury were all illegal under the common law and didn't need Congress to pass a law to be illegal, just a Judge and maybe a jury to be convinced that they were harming someone. Here contempt is still a common law crime, say something a Judge doesn't like and go to jail and stay at the Judges pleasure.
My country's constitution does say that freedom of expression is a fundamental right and companies and other private entities can get into trouble for denying speech but the courts don't like to trample on private entities unless there is measurable harm. Getting fired for something you said on your own free time might get overturned if it was said respectfully and was none of the companies business but Facebook would still be allowed to publish what they want.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[swb]

TV & Radio were heavily regulated and we even had the Fairness Doctrine which *required* media companies to broadcast contrasting viewpoints. In the Fairness Doctrine era, the vast majority of top 25 TV markets had maybe 5 commercial television stations.

So even though the television stations played games with timeslots and formats, they did give up air time to competing views, and it's kind of astonishing to think that in a given broadcast area a competing view being aired on one station literally represented 20-25% of the area's television broadcasting.

Print publishing has always been a fairly democratic technology, since literally anyone can own a press of some kind and presses scale down in cost faster than they scale down in capacity -- printing copies isn't the issue as much as distribution, and cities often supported multiple newspapers, even in the commercial era of large newspapers.

The movement to private spaces (physically, like shopping malls) or completely private communications networks and social media networks has eliminated many options for communicating to the public or even peacefully protesting.

No one owes you an engaged audience, but it's hard to see how democracy and free communication persists in a totally walled environment controlled by corporations. That's freedom for their owners, but not for anyone else. Dissent somehow becomes twisted into violating the owner's property rights.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[dbIII]

TV & Radio were heavily regulated and we even had the Fairness Doctrine which *required* media companies to broadcast contrasting viewpoints. In the Fairness Doctrine era, the vast majority of top 25 TV markets had maybe 5 commercial television stations.

That was a reaction to earlier deliberately biased material like the Hearst newspapers. Fox tries to do something similar but the scale is vastly different - Murdoch doesn't seem to have ever had anyone framed or beaten up while Hearst had a reputation for going that far.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Hognoxious]

44% isn't a monopoly.

In some jusrisdictions it's almost two.

Don't use Facebook. Problem solved.

Except you have to drive down the same streets as those who do, and be governed by the same politicians elected by those who do...

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Askmum]

I agree that they tend to box you into your own little echo chamber if you let them, but I am frequently annoyed and even somewhat offended by what people sometimes post on my FB.

Then don't let people post on your FB. Even though the principle is no different then sending you offending letters, on FB I believe you can at least block people from posting on your page.
But in principle: you don't get it, do you? This is not about recognizing that this is a historic picture, this is about the fact that if this was a current newspicture, it would be censored by Facebook. Facebook would ignore it, deny it, say this never happened. And therefore American attacts on Vietnamese villages never happened.
Do you get it now? That is wat censorship does. Any censorship. It rewrites history to suit the storytellers. Facebook / Marc Zuckerberg = Carver Media Group Network / Elliot Carver.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[uulbri]

+1 FB is useless, be it to communicate, or even worse to get info... There is no such things as "social networks". Those so called networks are everything but "social".

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[AmiMoJo]

When you say "competing view", you mean "mainstream competing view", for the most part. We are far better off with the internet in that respect. I doubt things like the "manosphere" would exist if it was down to TV to air those views. Aside from not being mainstream, it would have been balanced by opposing views and thus unable to breed in an echo chamber like it does now.

If you want the fairness doctorin for YouTube and Facebook just say so. What we have now is better though.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear you. However, Facebook is growing every day. It's impossible to ignore. I have refused to register and I told my friends not to try finding me there or tag me, but it's way too late for that. I don't live in the US and here in Europe what Facebook does - creating a database of "ghost accounts" gathering data about me without my consent - is illegal. And yet the EU does not and will not do anything. Facebook is a giant.

Careerwise I understand that I'm missing out and sadly, it's costing me a lot even in my social life. I'm the outsider. I missed many events because they were only advertised in Facebook and people do not bother with sending e-mails or phoning anymore. I know it cannot last because even as an independent worker (and I don't know how long it can last in this economy) telling people that no, I don't have Facebook and I don't have LinkedIn only raises surprised stares. And not pleasant surprises either.

I don't know how long I can last. The trending is clear: you're not on Facebook, you're nobody and nobody wants to do business with you. Zuckerberg has won. He's about to conquer the Internet. I don't want to think what's going to happen then.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[TheRaven64]

Facebook is not useless. It is doing a good job at its intended purpose: providing a mechanism for putting advertisers in touch with consumers. Just don't refer to advertising platforms as social media.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously-- You got caught red handed being censorship loving fuckwits who refuse to accept community feedback on policy decisions, naturally, you got your asses handed to you over it, and now you want to cuddle back into good graces so you can once again start dishing out your authoritarian horseshit once this blows over.

Fuck you.

(and for the people with the usual "Their service, their rules!" attitudes, fuck you idiots too. Facebook has maneuvered itself as a major gatekeeper between the press and their readers. That is what caused this whole censorship issue to explode like this in the first place. Once you start acting like a monopoly, or at least the major stake holder for a necessary position for society, you stop being allowed to have authoritarian control, and need to be more civically minded.)

Facebook would be more at home in a land with an authoritarian bent, like China or North Korea.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no student run over by a tank. The student cause the tanks to stop.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[nctritech]

Services like Facebook are so huge that they constitute the de facto "public square" of the Internet. As such, I think that all "public place" rules (such as the protections of the First Amendment) should be forced upon them. Non-participation in a site as huge as Facebook makes you a non-participant in modern society. Unfortunately, this also means that participation in digital society is heavily controlled by whoever controls Facebook, and if they disagree with you or don't like you for any reason, they can eject you from a big part of participation in modern society with no consequences.

Of course, the loud objections will be "They're a private company! Forcing them to abide by these rules is government overreach! How they operate should be entirely their choice!" To those people I would say that if you choose to operate a large social networking website, you've chosen to spend your time and money operating a public square. If you want to be free to arbitrarily eject people from society or force people to adhere to your notions of what the world should look like, don't choose to be the digital public square in the first place.

It's sort of like ISPs being designated as common carriers: anyone is free to build a business that revolves around information passing, but you are not free to arbitrarily control what information may be passed (thereby restricting the freedoms of others) without serious consequences.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[nctritech]

Trump and Clinton are the consequences of the terrible first past the post voting system more than anything else. That is what needs to be fixed in politics; it always devolves into a battle between two contenders, neither of which are wanted by the majority of the population, but all other choices go away because they have no chance of winning in FPTP voting.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[phantomfive]

No, they are the consequence of a public that doesn't pay attention. Countries with alternate voting systems still end up with crappy governments (Australia).

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about being owed a platform. It's about being a societal outcast because a "private corporation that can do whatever they want with their platform" has a huge chunk of the world's population on it and can arbitrarily edit your views or kick you out of the "public square" outright for disagreeing with them in any way. If you choose to be the public square, you are indeed obligated to let people set up soapboxes and speak without being shut down. Don't like it? Don't CHOOSE to be the public square of the Internet in the first place.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[nctritech]

The idiocy of the public as a collective group will unfortunately always be with us. The idiocy of the US voting system can at least be changed. We'll always have shitty and stupid people around no matter how hard we work to educate them. Well...er, eugenics, maybe? But then who'll clean the toilets?

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

the issue isn't that facebook has a censorship policy, the issue is that people treat facebook as a news current events site, it is a gossip site that people post some news on.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[painandgreed]

The world has changed. You may not like it, I certainly don't like it, but when a sizable portion of the population only really visits Facebook and relies on Facebook for news, events, all that sort of stuff, ANY kind of censorship is getting dangerously close to revisionism.

Seems like somebody should start FB pages that do nothing but post socially relevant articles about history that youngsters should be expected to know about.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[angel'o'sphere]

Actually it was not a 'naked vietnamese girl' running from a Napalm attack,
it was a 'burning naked girl' with burning napalm on her back!
Not really vissible in the old black&white photos.

The Journalist making it got a price for it.
America started to think about stopping the war.

The girl is now a 45 year old woman, who lived in constant pain since the attack. She undergoes surgery right now in the US, a special treatment with the attempt to kill nerves below the skin with lasers to relieve her from her pain.

Censoring stuff like this is so Orwellian ...

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Murdoch doesn't seem to have ever had anyone framed or beaten up

Bullshit. Read how Murdoch smashed the printers unions in the UK and how Ailes et alia (Murdoch flunkies) destroyed the career of anyone who stood in their way or said no.

Fuck you.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[david_thornley]

That's not how things worked back then, sonny.

Mainstream news, which included TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, and magazines, generally adhered to a sort of shared worldview, which included different views within limits. There were other publications that roughly corresponded to modern bloggers, and were considered about as reliable. I remember reading one, doubting what it said, and wondering how I could possibly verify what it said. They were useless for getting non-mainstream views to large numbers of people. In other words, news was generally in a totally walled environment controlled by corporations, and the only way to get something widely known was to have the backing of one or more of those corporations.

Re:Cut the bullshit, facebook.

[swb]

There's a lunatic fringe that will never find an outlet no matter how generous the hegemonic news media is. I'm not sure that failing to air the opinions of a UFO theorist during the timeslot allocated to fairness-style responses counts as an example of censorship.

Even so, in the 1970s it was a fairly common comedy trope to lampoon the "alternative viewpoint" segment many TV stations ran. Saturday Night Live made it a recurring theme in their news segment. It worked as comedy because people recognized it, and people recognized it because they had actually seen it -- TV stations *would* often let zealous people with marginal ideas on the air because it satisfied the fairness doctrine. They didn't get much time nor did they get prime time slots, but they did get air time.

A lot of TV stations also met their fairness doctrine quotas by hosting talk shows. Sure, they were hosted by the weekend traffic reporter and appeared on a Sunday morning at 6:30 AM time slot, but they would trot out all the usual suspects with weird ideas and treat them as if they had something important to say.

And historically, pamphleteers and broadside "bloggers" have been influential. They didn't keep track of photocopiers and mimeograph machines in the Soviet Union because there was a shortage of ink and paper, but because they worried about the influence of opinions that ran against what was showing up in Pravda, even if they lacked the distribution and production quality of a well-funded paper.

bwahahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bet you idiots didn't even know what it was when you were SJWing away!

Re:bwahahaha

[wierd_w]

Sadly that is probably true. I am no SJW (I tend to not get invited to those kinds of parties, since I tend to be crassly expressive about grim realities, and party poop their get togethers when I AM invited) but from what I have experienced of them, they react before thinking or reading.

The nature and historical meaning of the photo could have been right there in 72pt font in the headline above the image, and all they would have seen is naked girl running, and they would have gone into emotional bullshit mode instantly. Seen it more than once. One of the reasons I hate the zero tolerance mindset.

Re:bwahahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain how the historical context of the image makes it exempt from common-sense policies such as "no child nudity"?

Re:bwahahaha

[Archangel Michael]

SJW are all about kneejerking reactions based on emotional responses to certain stimuli. They are as bad (if not worse) than what they tend to be posting. Everything is "Traumatizing" to them. I am not longer sure that they are exaggerating their responses, though that was my initial instinct. Everything seems to be way over the top. Like they will litterally cry over the "best espresso" delivered at Starbucks (or some other local coffee shop) only to do the exact same thing three days later, at another shop. Everything is "best" (cry happy tears) or "worst thing ever" (crying sad hate filled tears of angst).

Re:bwahahaha

[pushing-robot]

I don't like FB but I can't fault them for this; content filtering is hard and ad-supported services can't afford to spend much per time or money per user. FB's terrible 'censors' are probably a bunch of overworked and underpaid college students, a few of whom might even know where the Vietnam War was fought. Mistakes will be made.

In this case, mistakes were made, the users protested, FB restored the images, the end.

Re:bwahahaha

[wierd_w]

Do I really need to go here, or are you just being willfully silly?

In the off chance that you are serious:

We choose not to give complicit support for actions that cause greivious harm to children. An alarming amount of child nudity in photography is for the purpose of purile "entertainment" of adults at the expense of the children imaged, often involving physical and sexual abuse of these children. We call this kind of image "child pornography", and rightly desire not to encourage it, and instead to actively discourage it.

The decision to remove all images of nude children is one of pure convenience in the face of objections about child porn being " art.". (Real porn featuring children being declared art to resist its removal, diluting actual art.) When you don't display the image at all, authoritarian style that problem just goes away.

Instead of being sensible, and asking a few reasonable questions about the image under scrutiny, like:

Did the photographer harm, or promote the harm of, the child pictured?

Is this image of a decidedly sexual nature, or intended to cause sexual excitation?

Will the circulation of this image likely result in the harm of additional children?

Etc--

You instead opt to be lazy, and just forbid all images.

There are consequences to taking the quick, easy, and lazy route. You might consider reading the philosophical treatise by Baudrillard concerning this matter. He proposes that human abstractions for ideas supplant the original concepts, and that this process continues, resulting in a final form that lacks all resemblance of the original, even denying the very concept of an original. (Progression of simulacra). By banning all pictures of naked children in order to combat the proliferation of child porn, you ultimately redefine what child porn is, and that process continues until the concept of child porn that comes to be has no resemblance whatsoever to the original one through which the practice was instituted in the first place. Eg, now "child porn" is any picture of a child in any state of undress, regardless of content or context. The emphasis is no longer to prevent the harm of children, the emphasis is the censorship itself, and the taboo of violating the censorship.

In the case of this image of Kim phuc, the girl was harmed: she was just moments earlier, literally on fire that cannot be easily extinguished (by design!), and ripped her own burning clothes off to save herself, while running from the burning remains of her home village-- destroyed for its strategic location in combating the Viet Kong.

Is the image likely to cause harm to other children?
No. This image was taken to draw attention to the harm being done, to prevent further harm. It is 180degrees off from being supportive of child harm.

Is the image of a sexual nature?
No. The image is of a terrified girl desperate to save herself as her world literally burns around her. There is no context for sex in this image at all.

Is this image intended to cause sexual excitation?
No. The intent of the image is to cause disgust and horror.

Very easy to determine that this is not child porn, when you don't become intellectually lazy and allow the basic concepts underpinning the basis of why we censor sexually explicit images of children to become mutated abstractions with no basis in reality.

Re:bwahahaha

[Cederic]

Well, mainly because there are no common-sense policies such as "no child nudity".

When everything is binary, nothing has nuance. That way lies intolerance, authoritarianism and death. There's no common fucking sense to that.

Re:bwahahaha

[wierd_w]

Bingo.

"No child nudity" is the authoritarians "easy" solution, that results in a morbid distortion that ultimately lacks the reasoning for the prohibition in the first place.

Re: bwahahaha

[wierd_w]

Silly, silly anonymous coward, believing that the political correctness madness does not originate in the liberal left, along with silly ideas about how being rude is always wrong, and nobody should get their feelings hurt ever.

The sad truth is that both sides really just love hearing themselves talk, and hate hearing what the other is saying, to the point that both sides really are totally down with censorship and echochambers.

Re:bwahahaha

[Cederic]

The intent of the image is to cause disgust and horror.

Sorry, I disagree. The intent of Nick Ut is known probably only to him but I'd guess he wasn't there to cause disgust and horror, he was there to document.

The entire power of the image is that it hasn't been manipulated, isn't artificially portrayed to cause emotion; it shows reality, and any emotional reaction is because of that reality, not the image of it.

This is one reason war photography is amongst the most honest form of art, let alone photography. Sure, you get the posed images, the action replays, the entirely faked activities.. but the best photographs, the ones that hurt, the ones that reach deep inside you.. they're very very real.

Re: bwahahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, weird w, this isn't political correctness, as generally understood, but simply hysterical moralism, making any point about the origins of political correctness to be rather meaningless.

Of course, if you want to say that the right considers any criticism of its conduct fighting a war against the godless comunists to be politically incorrect, I won't argue with you.

I'll just point out that most people won't grasp it, they don't know how to articulate the notion that the right finds certain communications and subjects to be offensive and forbidden. They'll probably blame you for it too.

Still, this is not political, the antiwar message of the liberals didn't factor into it this time, it was because she was nekkid, and we can't have that. Just imagine if somebody posted a picture of Michaelangelo's David. They'd faint! From the shock!

Re: bwahahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you and the parent are both correct. Here are some examples:

1.) SJWs offended by the word Freshmen as a term for first year college student. Ironically, same SJWs never mentioned any problem with the term Sophomore
Cite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j556MWGVVqI
2.) A Senator reflexively calling the POTUS a liar in public during a Presidential address.

Not making a call on right or wrong good or bad, just pointing out that in both examples (plenty of others), the reactions are similar - default response to emotional stimulus. That's why the 'best expresso' has to come from the 'best coffee house' and has to be 'the best ever' every day. Everything has to emotionally top what preceded it or it is ignored.

I think this is entirely normal behavior for say, a teenage girl (go ahead - be offended) but alarming when it happens more and more among all demographics (political, gender, religious, age, etc.,...).

Re:bwahahaha

[arth1]

common-sense policies such as "no child nudity"

As others have said, there is nothing common-sensical about that. If someone sees something sexual in an image of a naked child, that someone is the problem, not the image.

Re: bwahahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

You may want to consider another aspect of the situation, the assumption of logic and reason to a position, and the demand that it be esteemed.

These are also problems, because it is often a false presumption of being logical, and simply a way to demeen others as being emotional, which as we all know is simply despicable. Or is it?

Re:bwahahaha

[david_thornley]

Unfortunately, there are people who are sexually turned on by children, and some of them are evil. This led to child pornography being a hot issue, and it unfortunately included child nudity as part of the reaction. The picture is legal under the CP laws I've looked at, but different places have different CP definitions, and they aren't all intelligent.

The safest thing for something like Facebook to do is to disallow child nudity under any circumstances. Sad but true.

Facewhat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives a shit.

Don't always get it right?

[Anonymous Coward]

.. Is Facebook joking? They almost NEVER get it right.

Easy solution for you Facebook

[JoeyRox]

Stop trying to "get it right". You're not the arbiter of art or journalism. Just stick to what you do best - monetizing people's privacy.

Re:Easy solution for you Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

yes - they are making money off the "private" information people are volunteering for free

Re:Easy solution for you Facebook

[pushing-robot]

No, but they are the arbiter of their own service. (You are not.)

They are also forbidden by law from hosting child pornography.

Re:Easy solution for you Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

"They are also forbidden by law from hosting child pornography."

Which this image is not. Get it, you clueless, ignorant little piece of shit ?

Re:Easy solution for you Facebook

[dwillden]

To you and to me it is not. But it is a naked child. An underpaid overworked moderator has a queue of reported violations to examine, they have at most seconds per picture. If they don't happen to recognize the historical picture at that first glance, they see a naked girl. Prohibited, remove it. Who is clueless? In this case it's the AC that thinks mistakes are not permitted.

They are forbidden (with rather strict penalties) from hosting child pornography. In their situation it's better to block such a picture than to let it through and risk the penalties.

Re:Easy solution for you Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling it "child pornography" says a lot more about where your mind is than anything else.

Re:Easy solution for you Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boy... where do I start ?

First and foremost: "child nudity" does not equal "child pornography". And frankly, I'm sick and tired of this "nudity = sex" mindset in our pathetic societies. Blanket associations like this only demonstrates weak-mindedness and intellectual lazyness.

Second: Unless you've been living on a deserted island all your life, EVERYONE who's had access to a minimal level of education which is present in countries developped enough to have a Facebook presence (and yes, that also includes usually clueless, self-centered, narcissistic little millenials) should recognize INSTANTLY this iconic, historical image. I'm tired of ignorance always being used as an excuse for everything. Ignorance AT THIS LEVEL should be a crime against humanity.

And third: This was not a simple "mistake" by some random "underpaid overworked moderator". The image was posted, removed, reposted, re-removed, posted to a number of other accounts, removed systematically from those as well, REPEATEDLY. There was definitely a number of people involded, successively reviewing the picture, no-doubt with more and more scrutiny and advice from higher-up in the organization. And STILL they chose to delete the picture. That is, of course, until the norwegian fucking prime minister went public about this.

Let me tell you this: With all the power that Facebook acquired in the media sector, if people at every level of this organization are really THAT clueless, then Facebook NEEDS to be DESTROYED. Plain and simple. This is a matter of the future of humanity.

Re:Easy solution for you Facebook

[david_thornley]

Are you sure the law in all major jurisdictions Facebook operates in doesn't define child pornography in a way that includes this photograph?

Clearly, it isn't CP by any reasonable definition. Not all legal definitions are reasonable.

Phan Th Kim Phúc

[ClickOnThis]

In case anyone wonders what happened to her, Phan Th Kim Phúc (the girl in the photo) survived the napalm attack, albeit with injuries. She is now a Canadian citizen, living in Ajax, Ontario with her husband and two children. In 2015 she began getting laser treatments for her burn scars in Miami.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Phan Th Kim Phúc

[The-Ixian]

I wonder. If she had an issue with the photo and requested that FB take it down, would that be a different story?

This is hypothetical, of course.

Re:Phan Th Kim Phúc

[Anonymous Coward]

Why in Miami? Canadian healthcare is much superior than US healthcare, and FREE!!!! Just joking, we know why everyone comes to the US for serious healthcare.

Re:Phan Th Kim Phúc

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder. If she had an issue with the photo and requested that FB take it down, would that be a different story?

This is hypothetical, of course.

It's not really hypothetical. For much of her life she objected to the photo's publication but no one cares what some peasant thinks so it was published everywhere anyway.
Later in life she came to understand its importance, so says she no longer objects.

Re: Phan Th Kim Phúc

[Anonymous Coward]

Much more skin damage in Miami, so naturally that is a hotbed for treatment.

WTF is this

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a profound mistep, but somehow "sometimes we don't get it right" is all thats needed to assuage their consciences?

Oh, for pities sake, this isn't just a misstep at all is it?

Re:WTF is this

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a profound mistep, but somehow "sometimes we don't get it right" is all thats needed to assuage their consciences?

Oh, for pities sake, this isn't just a misstep at all is it?

'Some' (times) is a subset of 'all' (the time). If you eat 'all' of the cookies for example, you are correct if you say you ate 'some' of the cookies. It is a lie by omission but it is not an incorrect statement.

Her name is Kim Phuc and she now lives in Canada

[cold fjord]

Her name is Kim Phuc and she now lives in Canada. She was fleeing a napalm strike by the South Vietnamese Air Force.

How the Vietnam War's 'Napalm Girl' Is Finally Getting Her Scars Treated – 43 Years Later
The girl in the picture: Kim Phuc's journey from war to forgiveness
'Napalm Girl': An Iconic Image Of War Turns 40

The Kim Foundation International

putin will hire facebook to due what the USSR did

[Joe_Dragon]

putin will hire facebook to due what the USSR did in the past.

How about no...

[tc3driver]

Maybe just say no to censorship, let your users block the stuff they don't want to see, allow your users to create their own echo chambers. As long is at is not officially illegal, don't censor it.

So Facey bookey profits from Child Portography

[Anonymous Coward]

Those that are most critical of Facey bookey for censoring would also criticize for supporting pedophilia if they had gone in the other direction. Anyone can criticize and there is nothing facey bookey can do to not incur the wrath or correct thinking people on the webs.

On another note, that the offending picture could never have been taken of the Iraq / Afganistanian wars. Everyone would self censor. What can we learn from this? We can learn that everyone alive in 1970 was a blatant pedophile. Today in more enlightened times we do not put up with this crap. We do however take kids away from their parents for daring to let them walk to school alone.

It is truly a brave new world we live in. It is OK, though because Hillary Clinton / Trump is going to make it all right. God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.

Re:So Facey bookey profits from Child Portography

[tnk1]

I actually doubt many people would have criticized that particular photo being left in. It's had rather wide exposure over the decades.

Or rather, they wouldn't have criticized only Facebook about it. It's been all over the media.

With all that in mind, I don't have a problem with their algorithm catching it, it's the picture of a naked minor who is definitely not enjoying herself at the time. Sounds like the filter found exactly what it was supposed to find. I think the people who were offended by it being filtered out are hyperventilating. Yes, it was a mistake, but only because that picture has historical relevance. Managing by exception is an appropriate way to deal with such things as long as they get around to putting it back and adding it as an exception for the future.

Re:So Facey bookey profits from Child Portography

[ClickOnThis]

it's the picture of a naked minor who is definitely not enjoying herself at the time.

It does not sexualize or exploit her. It depicts her, along with other wounded, terrified children, fleeing a napalm attack. A real napalm attack. IMHO, that means it is not child pornography. It is history.

Re:So Facey bookey profits from Child Portography

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, when you can write a program which can identify that automatically, or can get platoons of minimum wage workers to identify historical relevance within their five second required response time to objectionable content, you can go beat Facebook at the PR game.

Re:So Facey bookey profits from Child Portography

[ClickOnThis]

I get you. Yes, it's too much to ask an algorithm to detect deep context, at least at the moment. But there do exist algorithms that can compare and match a photograph to a database of historical images. Such an algorithm need only be run when a photograph is flagged. It can then inform the human curator, who may not be aware of the photograph's provenance.

Re:So Facey bookey profits from Child Portography

[AthanasiusKircher]

It does not sexualize or exploit her. It depicts her, along with other wounded, terrified children, fleeing a napalm attack. A real napalm attack. IMHO, that means it is not child pornography. It is history.

While I agree (and probably most reasonable people would), the fact is that naked pictures of minors above the age of 2 and under the age of 18 are basically considered "suspicious" in almost every case. A few internet searches will quickly show a multitude of stories from the past decade where innocent people making innocent photos of children (e.g., family photos of a young kid during bathtime) have been investigated under child pornography statutes.

The sad state of affairs today is that basically if you have a nude photo of a kid, it is considered "child porn" until proven otherwise. (And given that possession of "child porn" is modern society's most grievous moral offenses, short of actual child molestation, such suspicion is often a horrific ordeal for innocent folks caught up in it.) For some bizarre reason, society as a whole has adopted a notion of sexualization of nude images of children, even as we strongly punish anyone who seeks to sexualize children directly. It's only in a nation obsessed with such puritanical views of nude bodies that we can get to this point -- nude bodies are simply NOT by default sexual, whether they are children, adults, or whatever.

Re:So Facey bookey profits from Child Portography

[SuricouRaven]

How silly is it? In many countries it's a criminal offence to possess artistic depictions of sexualised children. Not even photos, just pencil-and-paper drawings.

Why is this even an issue?

[QuietLagoon]

Facebook is a private website dedicated to monetizing the information they have collected from the members of that private site. Facebook can do whatever they please on their private website.

.
If there is a problem, it is those people who mistake Facebook for journalism or integrity.

Re:Why is this even an issue?

[oh_my_080980980]

Really? Then why is facebook apologizing...

Re:Why is this even an issue?

[DrEasy]

Because PR.

Re:Why is this even an issue?

[spacepimp]

Once Facebook took the plunge into editing/publishing and curating the news, everything you just said went out the window.

Re:Why is this even an issue?

[Cederic]

When a quarter of the planet's population gather in the same place, are you really trying to claim it's not a public place?

Re:Why is this even an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook is a private website dedicated to monetizing the information they have collected from the members of that private site. Facebook can do whatever they please on their private website.

.

If there is a problem, it is those people who mistake Facebook or journalism for integrity.

FTFY

Re:Haha

[msauve]

Just wait until someone posts the original Blind Faith album cover.

Re:Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

My God, the future of child porn is scary and politically opinionated! /s or /j, I can't decide. Fuck these meaning modifier tags!

Tagging based solution

[John Allsup]

There needs to be acceptable nudity policies. These should require users who upload photos with nudity to tag them as such, including whether sexual or non-sexual (the napalm girl is clearly non-sexual), and even pornographic (if there is a service that allows pornographic images). The rule then is that the uploader must tag certain tags if appropriate (e.g. non-sexual nudity), and so on. Then users have users settings on whether to block such tags, and if they see untagged images which should have been tagged, and would have been blocked given their settings, then there is the 'inappropriate image' system. When it comes to sexual nudity stuff, if present at all, there should be checks on users. Then AI can flag possible non-tagged images. This really ought to be well within what Facebook can do. In addition, with sensitive stuff (like the revenge porn stuff), there should be terms and conditions where blatant stuff like that european lawsuit is about can lead to details of uploaders being sent either to police or the victim's lawyers.

The problem is to try too hard to have an idiot-proof one-size-fits-all acceptable image policy.

Re:Tagging based solution

[Anonymous Coward]

There needs to be acceptable nudity policies

No. There is no such need. You don't want to look at nudity, sex and so on, then don't. You don't want to post nudity, sex and so on, then don't.

Your taste should not govern anyone else's taste. And the only way to get that accomplished is by each individual deciding what they want to show, and each individual deciding what they want to look at.

As soon as you decide you are some kind of standards gatekeeper for the rest of us, or you and some collection of like-minded wanna-be gatekeepers, you're well into abuse of liberty. Smart, thoughtful people will not put up with such things.

Re:Tagging based solution

[spacepimp]

The same AI they used to recognize naked and frightened children, could just as easily fingerprint famous images. (actually it would be simpler). It would be pleasant if people had thicker skins.

Re:Tagging based solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the rest of the paragraph. He details how it can be made to work w/o imposing one person's views on others very much.

Re:Tagging based solution

[HiThere]

Why do there need to be "acceptable nudity policies"?

I generally consider people who worry about nudity to be sick, and I wouldn't object if they got free medical treatment for their problem (except I don't think there is any accepted medical treatment).

I also consider those who support most censorship to be sick, with a similar comment. There are a few cases where public safety does indicate that censorship is desirable. E.g., people's bank account numbers, instructions in how to weaponize anthrax, etc. But nudity? Be serious!

Re:Tagging based solution

[AmiMoJo]

Maybe we should just get away from nudity being an issue. The more we try to hide it, the more it gets fetishised.

Re:Tagging based solution

[SuricouRaven]

This wasn't an AI. It was a non-A I. Facebook use an army of human moderators. If you click the button to report inappropriate content, they are the ones who inspect it.

Some minimum-wage drone had this flash on their screen, checked it against their list of forbidden material, and ticked 'child with exposed genitalia' or something like that.

It's how I would have done it

[clovis]

What happened at Facebook was a mistake, but I would have made the same mistake.

If I owned Facebook, I would have a censorship policy. No naked children would be near the top of the list. It might even be the only thing on it.
I'm certain that most of the photos of naked children in existence are perfectly innocent. I have some of my kids and my parents have some of me.

But I don't want to host child porn, child rape, or anything like that. It's a plain and simple fact that there are people who abuse children in horrible ways, and if I didn't censor that kind of thing it would be all over the place. I don't give a shit if the law says it's OK for me to host it; I don't want to be part of it.
And you know what else? I don't want to have to examine photos of naked children to try to guess what's going on.
So. No naked children.

So all my minions would know this and censor publication of the Kim Phuc photo because they want to keep their jobs and perhaps because they agree with me.

And then the world would come down on me over the Kim Phuc photo, pointing out that I'm being a dumbass and this is so very clearly and important and historical photo, and I'd relent because in this case they're right and I'm wrong. But no way would I roll over for just anyone out there - it would have to take a lot of pressure for a specific case.

Re:It's how I would have done it

[spacepimp]

According to the Intercept they collaborating with the Israeli Government to decide what should be censored. The next time the censorship subject comes up about Facebook it won't be about naked children. Justifying censorship as an algorithmic decision absolves no blame.

Re:It's how I would have done it

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah because naked children of course have the potential to really cause harm. much better to show how people get killed.

Re:It's how I would have done it

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool virtue signaling bro.

captcha: dripping

Re:It's how I would have done it

[Carewolf]

What happened at Facebook was a mistake, but I would have made the same mistake.

It is not a mistake if you activately choose to be a nazi. Then you are just a moron.

Re:It's how I would have done it

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, you should never go near a beach in Europe or other non-US countries then.
I frankly think it's sick to force a 2-year old girl to wear a bra or bathing suit to satisfy people who are afraid of nudity.

more surprises here

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Facebook actually communicated with users.
2. But you have to be the prime ministers of a medium sized state. Well this is not that surprising really. Opportunist businesses gonna be opportunist businesses,
3. But then you actually get a letter.! From a person! with a 3 letter function description!
4. Norway processes FOI requests in a matter of days !
5. If you are a mere mortal, and the picture is not world renowned, but merely something you took yourself while happening to be there, your are fucked. Account gone and FBI informed that you are a pedo. Well, also not that surprising really.
6. Apparently you get a letter if Facebook takes you seriously. If you do not get a letter, that means Facebook is just taking you.

Come to think of it, the only surprising thing is the FOI request.

Re: Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing wrong with child nudity or photos of it. We have a society that over reacted to a very small minority of abusers - thanks to an incompetent media like ABC - and disturbed folks who consume it.

The napalm girl showed in stark imagery the horrors of the Vietnam Nam war and the hardships the USA was inflicting on the Vietnamese people over ideology.

We don't see that now. Notice how sanitized the coverage is of the wars in Irag and Afganistan? Notice how they never seem to end?

We treat war like a football game now and have no clue the horrors we are inflicting and the permanent ill will we have created.

Wish I hadn't used up mod points

[mpercy]

Otherwise plus plus.

Diminishing photo title

[KrispiCritter]

Am I the only person here who is offended by calling this poor person "Napalm Girl"? I feel it really diminishing her and what happened to her. While others here pointed out her name, I will not, as I feel the victim to the event deserves some anonymity, given her age when it happened and the horrific event itself. Please give her the dignity she deserves. And, please do not use my alias as a pun against her. I have been using it for years, only to indicate certain habits I did have (and thusly richly deserve the alias) during the 60's and 70's (yes, I saw the photo when it was first published). So please, stop calling her this atrocious name.

Re:Diminishing photo title

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only person here who is offended by calling this poor person "Napalm Girl"? I feel it really diminishing her and what happened to her. While others here pointed out her name, I will not, as I feel the victim to the event deserves some anonymity, given her age when it happened and the horrific event itself. Please give her the dignity she deserves. And, please do not use my alias as a pun against her. I have been using it for years, only to indicate certain habits I did have (and thusly richly deserve the alias) during the 60's and 70's (yes, I saw the photo when it was first published). So please, stop calling her this atrocious name.

I completely agree. I don't call her napalm girl but rather her real name when it's being discussed.
As for anonymity, she did want that in her earlier life, but no longer. She has a foundation now:
http://www.kimfoundation.com/

Re:Diminishing photo title

[Anonymous Coward]

So when it's someone you like we can't use nicknames but clock boy was perfectly acceptable?

Re:Diminishing photo title

[spacepimp]

She has come to terms with the image and understands the importance of it being published. If she got over it, maybe you can too?

Phan Thi Kim Phuc is an UNESCO Good Will Ambassador and the biography/documentary about her has all proceeds going to the Kim Phúc Foundation, which supports child victims of war. She is hardly asking to be forgotten or for dignity she has been denied. You shouldn't be offended that the the name is what is in the picture. It is awful what she suffered. We should all be ashamed of what happened to her, but not at the name of the photo.

Re:Diminishing photo title

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not offended at all. It is the shortest apt description of the photo. In fact, if there were two tags to choose for the photo they would be 'napalm' and 'girl'. There are many others that fit of course such as 'vietnam', 'war', 'innocent', etc.,... but those are the top two.

This is similar to 'tank man' (Tienanmen Square). I don't think the names these people are known by are diminishing to either person. In fact, I think the anonymity of the names is important - it established the individuals as representative of 'any' man (man as in human being). That is what made both events historic and important. It could have been 'any' girl that got burned by napalm. It could have been 'any' innocent. It could have been 'any' village. It could have been 'any' war. It could have been 'any' innocent. It could have been 'any' Square. It could have been 'any' man. It could have been 'any' protest.

Re:Diminishing photo title

[bangular]

I'm glad you brought this up. The discussion seems to be around facebook and censorship, but instead let's talk about the Vietnam war, the use of napalm and how terrible and horrific it is, and what led to this poor girl being burned by it.

I'm a millennial and I think very few of us appreciate how senseless the Vietnam war was. There was a draft. A friggin' DRAFT. This doesn't happen anymore. I can't imagine getting a draft card and being sent off to die for a war I do not believe in. America dumped toxic chemicals all over this country and caused cancer in many people. When the veterans got home, they weren't exactly welcomed back on a red carpet.

Maybe someone can correct me or expand since I wasn't alive during the war, but as far as I can tell it was a pretty senseless war and this picture should remind us to be a little more careful with how we step foot on foreign soil.

Re:Diminishing photo title

[quenda]

So please, stop calling her this atrocious name.

You can pronounce it "Fook" if it bothers you that much.

Re:Diminishing photo title

[SuricouRaven]

America still has the draft available as an option, the Selective Service System. All the preparations are maintained - the list of who is eligible, accepted exemptions, procedures for selecting people. It's not currently used for conscription, but it's designed to that in the event of a crisis it can be activated at very short notice.

It would take a dire situation indeed for that to happen though, just because it would be so unpopular and many politicians would lose their next election if they supported it.

The Vietnam war wasn't senseless, really. It was a proxy war. Vietnam had their own civil war, but then half the world stepped in to back one side or the other because everyone wanted the long-term advantage that would come from having a government sympathetic to their own interests in power.

Re:Diminishing photo title

[dwillden]

Not senseless, just not well managed politically. (Militarily we did very well, we just didn't manage it on the political side well so the American populace began to think we were losing). Much of what our foreign policy back then was to stop the spread of communism. In that aspect there we did fail, but overall we were mostly successful in limiting the spread of that form of oppressive government.

As to the draft. No the draft was not a pleasant experience knowing that you had little choice or say but know that it is still there, although very unlikely to ever be used again. If you are a male over the age of 18 you must register and theoretically if things got really bad we could reinstate it. However our military isn't really structured to handle draftees anymore so it would almost cause more problems than it would solve, but if we needed bodies to fill ranks we have the option. That said it also had the benefit that the public(or at least the male half), in facing the universal risk of being drafted seemed to have a better sense of civic responsibility. Not saying absolutely that a==b but it certainly seems to be a key component.

Re: Haha

[Pig Hogger]

The napalm girl showed in stark imagery the horrors of the Vietnam Nam war and the hardships the USA was inflicting on the Vietnamese people over ideology

Actually, no. Kim Phuk was bombed by South-Vietnamese bombers; that hardship was inflicted on Vietnamese by Vietnamese.

Re: Haha

[PopeRatzo]

Actually, no. Kim Phuk was bombed by South-Vietnamese bombers; that hardship was inflicted on Vietnamese by Vietnamese.

The South Vietnamese were the clients of the US. The bombers came from the US and the napalm came from the US. The war (and the atrocities) doesn't happen without US imperialism.

So argue

[Anonymous Coward]

... most of the photos of naked children in existence are perfectly innocent ...

So how about arguing the "someone please think of children" meme should be directed to cyber-bullying and protecting their online history instead of cowering under blanket censorship because she wasn't wearing clothes. FaceBook has no trouble advising everyone of their needs on every other issue. It ridiculous that we use 'better safe than sorry' on innocent photos but stolen photos (Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Jennifer Lawrence) are plastered all over the internet.

How on Earth I know this pic without having FB?!

[osiaq]

How on Earth I know this pic without having FB?! And dont give me BS about some "yaaaay im a rebel". I have an account to stalk idiots from my past stupid enough to post their real names. So how the fuck I do know all those pictures and 99.9% of the stories you are talking about WITHOUT having this retarded account? For all of you whining about FB censorship theres a special place in hell for putting "=" between internet and Facebook You retarded sheeps are a disgrace.

Re: Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Vietnamese were French clients. The US only got involved because the French needed help trying to contain the Communists, worldwise US enemies.

The US never 'controlled' the Vietnamese, or it's damned certain the war never would have been run in such an incompetent manner. Notice how the US had 1/10 the troops, yet did the vast majority of the fighting? That's because the US wasn't in charge! Accusations of 'imperialism' sound great in Russia Today's propaganda sections, but hold no truth in the real world. The US was not, ever, in charge of Vietnam. Period.

Re: Haha

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Did you just assume Hatshepsut's genotype?

I'm sure it will be fine

[Bodhammer]

I'm sure it will be fine after you control all the news: https://www.yahoo.com/news/fac...

Re:putin will hire facebook to due what the USSR d

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about?
I just read on Facebook that the USSR never invaded Poland during WWII, and only those evil fascist Nazis would ever claim otherwise. I also saw a promoted article about how Putin has improved the life of all Russian peoples, and saved a child from a bear, too.

Berg

[Anonymous Coward]

Solberg, Sandberg, Iceberg. What's the difference?

Re:Berg

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't different. The different one is Waterberg - it's a liquid.

Re:putin will hire facebook to due what the USSR d

[Anonymous Coward]

You are censoring yourself with your crappy English. It's too much effort to work out what you mean.

FB Reporting is a Bad Joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet a Video showing a Arabic Woman being stoned in a pit with large fist sized rocks was left up and the reply given was "This does not violate our Community Standards " WTF? Seriously?

and dont get me started on the cant block or report the Please vote and share pray like Scammer Vote Farming Pages.

Re:putin will hire facebook to due what the USSR d

[Anonymous Coward]

I also saw a promoted article about how Putin has improved the life of all Russian peoples

And Putin will improve the life of all American peoples, too, once his agent Emperor Trump gloriously assumes power here in the U.S.A.!

Is liberty dying where you live? Escape to Keene!

[Anonymous Coward]

Until recently as in the last few years I'd have agreed with you. The problem is there is an active migration movement driving people to New Hampshire for the purpose of pursuing liberty in our life time. There is no where in New Hampshire you can move to that you won't find lots of liberty-minded people who don't like the idea of government let alone big government or corporate monopolies such as Facebook. And nowhere that you won't find people who have migrated within the past few years for the purpose of pursuing liberty.

Even while people are utilizing facebook to some degree as an activist tool we're diversifying and decentralizing communications and getting out there in the real world. Activists are utilizing two-way radios, Telegram, some sort of chat thing called Porcchat, and even working to get away from the US dollar. In Keene, New Hampshire we have more BitCoin friendly businesses than anywhere else in the world and this is a town of a mere 30,000 people (including a smallish university population).

In Keene there are lots of opportunities to get out in the real world to meet people. We have multiple meetups a week. I'm going to one in 45 minutes: Taco Tuesdays. On Sunday's there is Social Sunday. There are also BitCoin meetups monthly as well. We're out and about in the real world. Not just attached to the computer. This is *JUST* Keene too. You'll find similar things going on in towns and cities across New Hampshire. Come, join us, at least if you want zero government or something close to it. We'd rather end taxation, public education, and police, and other burdensome and unnecessary programs that result in government theft of its people. We're not cold and we're not against charity. That would be a miss characterization. We just want it to actually be charity and not theft. It's not about money though. It's about the idea that you should not utilize violence to achieve political gain and taxes, public education, and similar are exactly this. Just as is the outlawing of drugs or restricting what people can buy or sell. You can have non-profit organizations keeping an eye on safety issues without government. We don't need a government to shut down unlicensed restaurants for people to make an educated decision not to eat at restaurants which have demonstrated themselves to be harmful.

www.freekeene.com www.freestateproject.org www.freetalklive.com

Re: Haha

[cbraescu1]

The bombers came from the US and the napalm came from the US. The war (and the atrocities) doesn't happen without US imperialism.

The truth is that the killings and suffering in Vietnam increased tenfold after the Americans were gone and the civilians were left to face the Communists.

It's okay to suck Communist dick, I just hope you do that for money (as opposed to being so dumb to do it for free).

Re:Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the cover from Virgin Killer by Scorpions.

Re: Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

History doesn't need to be run through some 1984-esque sanitization process because the lowest common denominator chooses to manufacture non-issues to take offense to. If you look at the photo in question and all you take from it, at best, is that it's an attempt at a political statement you disagree with or, at worst, a pornographic image involving children, then there is something very, very wrong with you and I strongly urge you to seek mental help.

Re: Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you denying that Hatshepsut was a beautiful and proud black woman who possessed a profound wisdom that transcended the ages?

No, censorship takes practice like any other skill

[jbn-o]

"Getting it right" depends on what they're trying to get right. TheIntercept.com tells us "Facebook Is Collaborating With the Israeli Government to Determine What Should Be Censored" and Glenn Greenwald told us about these problems before as did Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen before Greenwald (the latter two rightly calling Facebook "a monstrous surveillance engine" and the like). As Moglen points out in every one of his speeches in the past few years (if not longer) that "Stallman was right". But back to your point about how Facebook should stop trying to "get it right" as Facebook's rep says: These are precisely the problems any censor faces when trying to figure out the details of what should be censored; the implicit assumption being that censorship is right & proper to do, and is merely a matter of haggling over price (be it money or favors with the powerful) as the old joke goes.

Re: Haha

[PopeRatzo]

The truth is that the killings and suffering in Vietnam increased tenfold after the Americans were gone and the civilians were left to face the Communists.

The funny thing is that the "bloodbath" that was expected after the fall of Saigon never happened. Yes there were South Vietnamese forces sent to prison for helping the Americans. There's a guy who teaches Math at UIC who is one of them and he's told me the story.

According to the Red Cross, the transfer of sovereignty to the Republic of Vietnam was less violent on those collaborators than the liberation of France in WWII.

So no, the killings and suffering in Vietnam did not increase tenfold after the Americans were gone. In fact they lessened a great deal. Now all we have to do is get rid of the 80,000,000 unexploded cluster bombs from the 250,000,000 that the Americans dropped on Laos between '64 and '73, but I suppose you're going to tell me that Laos got more violent after the Americans left, too.

How about

[Anonymous Coward]

Some cash money you lying whores.

Re: Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

Most statistics are just made up on the spot. 62% of people know that!

I love the smell of napalm in the morning!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously can we just bomb facebook its wasting far to many centuries of peoples time

Re:Is liberty dying where you live? Escape to Keen

[dbIII]

Liberty is not being free of government you fuckwit - liberty is being having a say in how and works and effectively being a part of it. All the "democracy is two wolves and a sheep choosing dinner" manipulative pricks are pretending that the "sheep" who want a fair system for all come in massive flocks and the wolves are very rare.

Democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the others :)

Correction - Missed a "don't"

[dbIII]

Correction:
Pretending that the "sheep" who want a fair system for all don't come in massive flocks and pretending that the wolves are not as rare as they are.

Understatement of the Year

[vikingpower]

Facebook hardly ever gets it right. Whatever it does. Facebook can not meaningfully be associated with "right" within any moral framework worthy of that name.

the real problem

[Anonymous Coward]

the real problem of course is that they think to know what it means "to do this right". Apparently their moral compass is not exactly what others think. It's also called censorship. What's new is that it's a commercial entity executing it as opposed ot a a government. Or is it?

What's difficult?

[bmack500]

What in the world was difficult about this? A war photo of a little girl whose clothing had been burned off by Napalm. What exactly was the difficult decision? There was zero reason to censor this photo. Good Lord these people can be such idiots!

Re: Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

South-Vietnamese bombers

Actually, the bombs were just dropped by some pilot. Not even. Some guy in the bomb bay. You can't just blame the North Koreans as a people.

I see it clearedly now. You're so right. No longer will I be lead away by false solicitations of history. World Wars Vietnam was a Just War and we were right to send our Space Marine units down from orbit to save those oppressed villagers.

Re:Is liberty dying where you live? Escape to Keen

[TheRaven64]

If two wolves and a sheep vote for dinner, game theory tells us that one of the wolves is going to be dinner and it's going to be the sheep's call which one. If you're a sheep, you obviously want to stay alive, so won't vote to be eaten. If you're a wolf, you want to end up in a situation tomorrow where there's one wolf and a sheep, not two wolves. Both wolves have an incentive to vote for the other wolf, the sheep gets to pick whichever wolf grants it the most concessions in exchange for its vote. As analogies go, it's a pretty poor one for making the point that its proponents think that they're making.

Re: Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to stop basing all your "evidence" on what you and your mom do together in your trailer home.

Re:Is liberty dying where you live? Escape to Keen

[dbIII]

Thanks, I'll have to remember that the next time someone inflicts the silly quote on me.

Re: Haha

[strikethree]

The war (and the atrocities) doesn't happen without US imperialism.

Are you forgetting to mention the Chinese imperialism for a reason?

Re:Haha

[shakah]

Or the cover from Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy.

Damage control

[allo]

If they would have kept their strong policy here, there would be a general discussion about the policy. So they admit a small failure, allow the image and life goes on. Nobody needs to discuss the policies any further, because the image is there, isn't it?

Re: Haha

[Penguinisto]

The funny thing is that the "bloodbath" that was expected after the fall of Saigon never happened. .

...revisionist history much?

Seriously - ~2 million people fled the country by any means possible (a staggering percentage of whom died in the effort, and the majority of the survivors telling tales of being shot at and losing family to the NVA on their way out).

Pretty sure they weren't leaving a peaceful utopia, sport.

So, do you have better documentation for your assertions than 'my math prof told me'?

Re: Haha

[Penguinisto]

I'm also kind of curious as to how much 'US imperialism' figured into Lenin and Stalin's little string of atrocities...

Re: Haha

[PopeRatzo]

I'm also kind of curious as to how much 'US imperialism' figured into Lenin and Stalin's little string of atrocities...

Can you give examples of Lenin and Stalin committing atrocities in Vietnam?

This is not a problem at all.

[rhyous]

Wow! Is this over-hyped in the media.

Facebook, please remove all child nudity automatically. That is fine. If someone wants an exception, please let them submit that exception manually.

That is what happened.

This is not a problem at all.

Re:Haha

[peawormsworth]

And also, facebook is saying this historic photo would never be seen if it was shot and posted today. We live in a censored time, where history will simply disappear because some aspect of the memory of it offends someone.